When an individual is admitted as a patient into a hospital, certain information about the patient must be acquired and made available to various members of the hospital staff. Such information includes, for example, the patient's identity, address, age and occupation, next of kin, medical history, conditions for which treatment is sought, preexisting conditions, and any medical insurance information.
During a patient's stay in a hospital, written information relating to his medical history, doctors' and nurses' observations and remarks, laboratory reports, diagnoses, doctors' orders, prescriptions and other notes by the medical team, including doctors, nurses, technicians, orderlies and the like, become part of the patient's file. Patients with chronic conditions or who are frequently hospitalized may have numerous files of substantial size which contain important historic, as well as current, information. The information that is necessary to provide a complete picture of the patient includes, for example, the patient's vital signs, fluid balance, respiratory function, blood parameters, electrocardiograms, x-rays, CT scans, MRI data, laboratory test results, diagnoses, prognoses, evaluations, admission and discharge notes, and patient registration information. This information originates from a variety of sources, including the patient, doctors, nurses, monitors connected to the patient, testing laboratories, the patient's medical records, and hospital administration records.
A massive amount of information about the patient is therefore generated in a relatively short time. Some or all of this information is typically manually recorded in a flowchart which is affixed to the patient's bed. A disadvantage of manual recordation of such information is that it is slow and tedious. Consequently, such information is susceptible to later misinterpretation because of illegibility, incompleteness, the sheer volume of information being recorded and tracked, and human error.
Although critical care environments, such as hospital intensive care units, trauma units, emergency rooms and the like, are filled with state-of-the-art electronic equipment for monitoring of patients, these devices still do not provide the medical team with a clear and complete picture of the patient and the efficiency of the treatment which he is receiving. Existing medical display systems are disadvantageous because they are incapable of interconnection with a variety of instruments and monitors, especially if such equipment is made by several different manufacturers. In addition, most existing systems save patient data for a relatively short time, often for less than the duration of a typical patient's stay in the hospital. Also, existing systems typically cannot accept the manual entry of information and/or cannot combine such information with data received from other electronic devices.
Much of the information contained in a patient's files may be absolutely essential for effective and timely treatment. Unfortunately, this essential information may not be easily retrievable from the volumes of information in a patient's records. The necessary information may be overlooked, or mistranscribed, or entered in an incorrect location on the chart. In other circumstances, because of the urgency associated with the patient's condition, the medical team may not have time to search through a patient's file for certain vital information.
In addition, a patient's treatment plan consists of a series of instructions that may change during the course of treatment. In a manually recorded and displayed system, such as a flowchart attached to a patient's bed, it is difficult to ensure that all details of a treatment plan are recorded, and it is difficult to track such manually recorded information. As a result, a patient may receive a treatment late, or not at all. Clearly, if the medical team cannot access essential information about a patient in a timely and complete manner, the quality and effectiveness of the care and treatment of the patient may be compromised.
Many hospitals have changed the way in which patients are billed for services. In the past, patients were typically billed on the basis of days hospitalized. With recent changes in health care management and practice, patients are now more likely to be billed on the basis of treatments received. Greater efficiency in the treatment of patients is therefore emphasized. As a consequence, hospitals now scrutinize the effect of a treatment on a patient more closely, with increased monitoring, observation and recordation of the patient's responses to treatment. The increased amount of information that must be recorded about a patient makes the existing manual-entry system extremely cumbersome and time-consuming for the medical team.
There exists a need for all data and information obtained from and about a patient in a hospital to be immediately and selectively accessible to various members of the medical team in a hospital in accordance with the function performed by those members.